Scientists have found the oldest stars in the universe center of the Milky Way – RIA Novosti

© Photo: ESO

MOSCOW, November 12 – RIA Novosti . Astronomers have discovered in the vicinity of the center of the galaxy some of the oldest stars of the universe that have formed in just 300 million years after the Big Bang, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.

“In the center of galaxies, there are so many stars, the discovery of these rare stars, like looking for a needle in a haystack. The problem, however, is easier if we burn the farm, destroying unnecessary data, and collect needles star with a magnet. Finding such ancient stars will allow us to understand how the early universe was different in chemical terms “- says Andrew Casey (Andrew Casey) from Cambridge University (UK).

Casey and his colleagues found several dozen very old stars near the center of the Milky Way, watching the 14 thousands of stars with the help of the Australian telescope AAT that can simultaneously monitor the four hundred bodies and to study their range.

The first stars of the galaxy and the universe, explains Casey, markedly different in their appearance, the device and the history of the life and death of their modern “cousins” so their bowels barely contained the astronomical “metals” – elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Astronomers call such luminaries “Star III population”.

Today, astronomers believe that they were a hundred times heavier than the Sun, several million times brighter than him, and died in the explosion of exotic twin-unstable supernova, in which light is transformed into a giant thermonuclear bomb, the explosion of a star that was not even a black hole.

Scientists have for a long time believed that the last such stars born from the primordial matter of the universe, might be lurking in the center of the Milky Way and other galaxies, where the light is an average of 7 billion years older than the Sun and other stars with margins. For decades, astronomers have tried to find them, but all searches ended without results, including because at the center of the Milky Way home to billions of stars, the study of each of them will leave hundreds of thousands of years.

Casey and his colleagues found a way to “burn” this Stack stellar hay and simplify the search for the oldest stars – they found that light III population should have a little more blue shade than light of similar size and age of the I and II of the population.

Guided this idea, scientists have found in the center of the Galaxy about 14 thousand stars having similar hue, and examined them with the AAT. Analysis of the spectra allowed the research team Casey are two dozen stars whose bowels barely contained the astronomical metals.

© Andrew Cooper, John Helly (Durham University)

After opening several candidates for the role of the oldest stars of the universe, scientists have studied these luminaries with a more powerful and sensitive telescope “Magellan”, installed in Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. It turned out that just seven of them can lay claim to this title.

According to calculations the authors, these luminaries bowels contain 10 thousand times less iron than the Sun or any other relatively young star. This means that these lights were born after about 300,000 years after the Big Bang, in just a moment after the star, in principle, could begin to take shape.

The study of the stars and the discovery of new such luminaries help hopes Casey understand how the galaxy looked like in the early days of his life and how it has grown and evolved.